


we'll be good in another life

by alpacasandravens



Series: i need to stop being sad about lonelyeyes [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cheating, Falling In Love, Jonah!Elias, Lots of emotional pain, M/M, Marriage, Unhealthy Relationships, i hope that writing this doesn't make me an eliasfucker, immortal!peter, this time from elias's pov, victorian lonelyeyes, you know how it is with lonely eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding his relationship with Peter Lukas and the beginning of his service to the Beholding. Statement never given.Or, Elias's POV of his two hundredth anniversary.





	we'll be good in another life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the companion piece to [ love me, leave me ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/19254331) (the first fic in this series), so if you haven't read that, you might want to! I think this works as a stand-alone piece, but I do reference the other fic a fair bit (since this is just an alternate POV of the same events), so I'd recommend reading it first. inspired by @WitchyBees's comment on the other fic, which contained the words "i'm honestly dying to know Elias' side of all this now" and to which i said "oh same."  
> title from Another Place by Bastille because Doom Days is the most lonely eyes album I've ever heard

Statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding his relationship with Peter Lukas and the beginning of his service to the Beholding. Statement never given.

 

Elias sat in his cell, idly Watching. Peter was nowhere to be seen, but of course he wasn’t. The bastard just had to go into the Lonely tonight, just to spite him. He really didn’t know what else he’d expected.

He Saw that idiot Archivist of his sneaking around his office, but the fog of the Forsaken was too strong there to see why. Peter must be there, and purposely blocking Elias’s view. Asshole.

Just when he’d almost given up and resigned himself to sleep (Without even a glimpse of Peter. On their anniversary. How rude.) his office popped into a sudden focus. The fog had disappeared, or more aptly returned to its source - Peter sat in his chair, where he had always been, no longer hidden. He was drunk. Elias shook his head; it was almost like Peter cared.

When his Archivist asked Peter for his statement, Elias could feel the compulsion - he may be lost in a world beyond his understanding, but he was strong. He would survive. Elias had chosen well.

For a minute, Elias just listened and Watched. He Knew Peter’s story, of course. He always had, though Peter had never told it to him and never would. That had always been their way - Peter came back just long enough to make Elias remember he couldn’t live without him, and then he withdrew, making him miss him enough to Watch Peter as he moved on before inevitably gravitating back to Elias. 

That’s what he was doing now. They both knew that Peter could have easily secured a visitation today, and even if he couldn’t, the invisibility offered him by the Forsaken allowed him access just as easily. But he chose to be away, in Elias’s office, because he knew how much that would hurt Elias. Sometimes, he regretted ever finding Peter, but every time Peter came back after a long trip at sea or a divorce, he chose it all over again.

Before they’d made their choices, before Peter had become so wrapped up in the Forsaken that all Elias could read from him was betrayal, and then nothing at all, he’d been able to feel the love practically radiating off of him. He hadn’t given himself to the Beholding yet, but he still Knew. Just like he Knew that the disappearance of that love, this impossible cycle they were trapped in, was his fault. 

Elias closed his eyes and remembered. He kept Watching Peter, a spike of loneliness constant in the back of his mind, and offered his statement. Not to Jon - never to Jon, who would be kept in the dark about all but the most necessary details of their world - but to the Eye. He didn’t know why he did it. The Beholding had seen every thought in his head, knew every fiber of his being. He gave his statement for Peter, though he knew he couldn’t hear. He was too proud to tell his story where Peter could hear him, but he offered the Eye his memories (memories it already owned) in a desperate bid for Peter to come back.

 

Now, the Eye does not watch in the same way as a person. It can Watch feelings, thoughts, even listen to memories. And so, Elias’s statement to the Eye was not so much a statement as it was a flood of love, regret, and longing. But if it had been a statement, something meant to be understood by a non-omnipresent being, it would have gone something like this.

 

“There are some things that you can’t take back. One of those things is a promise. Another is a heart. A promise can never be unmade, only broken, and once broken it is impossible to put back together. My marriage was like something ceramic, appearing stronger than it was, and I’ve been desperately trying to put the pieces back together since I took a hammer to it centuries ago. I don’t regret the hammer though, only the fallout.

You see, some things are necessary. I was given a choice between struggling down the hard path that would inevitably lead to failure and choosing the best of terrible options. Maintain my neutrality and continue to accidentally increase the effectiveness of rituals as Smirke had done, or bring about the Watcher’s Crown, the only ritual that would not necessitate the ending or twisting of humanity into unrecognizable shapes. And there had always been part of my soul that had been claimed by the Eye, that had called out to wear the Crown ever since I could remember.

I’d tried to be neutral for so long. I’d promised Peter that I would be, that neither of us would have to get wrapped up in that game the powers played with humanity. But of course I couldn’t stay out of it. I was too curious, and every answer I found only took me further down the rabbit hole. When I gave myself to the Eye, I knew what it would cost me, but that was only the last step in a one-way road I had been walking on for too long.

When I started university, I had never intended to research the paranormal. I hadn’t really known what I wanted to do, and so I skated my way through my first year taking general education courses that were mildly interesting and which, while I’d always wanted to know more, the thought of pursuing as a career made me feel sick. I enjoyed knowing about how the body worked, and something itched inside of me when I thought of all that remained to be discovered, but I knew I didn’t want to be one of the researchers slaving away for years in search of a small breakthrough. 

In the beginning of my second year, I stumbled across a pattern. I found myself in the library in the dead of night putting together the pieces of the grand puzzle that formed the universe, learning that I’d never truly been able to see the full picture of my reality until this moment. I learned of the powers and those that worshipped them, but I couldn’t learn much more from those books. I couldn’t even learn enough to determine their reality - most of the manuscripts were handwritten accounts of terrible creatures and horrific ideas, ones that would not have been out of place among sensationalist books of prophecy but which were corroborated by enough similar documents that they could not be discounted.

I interviewed everyone I could find who had any connection with the powers, and it still wasn’t enough. They had all merely been terrorized, and while there was some satisfaction in hearing an old woman’s story in the corner of a small cafe and being able to classify her sleepwalking and pervasive conviction that her life was not her own as Web, I wanted more. I just wanted to understand.

So I met with an artist in her studio and ran away as the worlds she created began to twist around me, painted doors opening wide to reveal dimly lit hallways beckoning to be explored. I stood in the street when I stopped running, heart pounding and eyes wild. I wanted to go back. I made myself walk away.

I traveled to Kent to interview loneliness, assuming it was nowhere near as dangerous as the spiders or the Spiral. The Lukases received me with as much hospitality as they were capable, but I learned little from them. Lifetimes of isolation help with keeping secrets. One, though, offered to tell me more.

‘I can try to help you,’ he said, ‘just not here. You’ll never understand anything here.’

So the next day I took him into town and demanded he tell me everything he knew. ‘Why did the powers exist?’ I asked. ‘Why devote yourself to one? What do they do?’

I learned nothing that day. The Lukas I’d brought, Peter, was as young as I was. He hadn’t given himself to the Forsaken yet, though he’d seen little else in his life. He spent the entire time we were in town gawking at the sheer volume of people on the street, and he said hello to most everyone we passed. I was almost embarrassed to be around him, as he had no idea how to interact in any kind of social setting. But he wanted to learn, which was something I could understand.

Over the next couple weeks, I met with Peter more often. I never learned anything about the Lonely. That’s not true. I learned to miss him, to look forward to just walking around the city with the socially awkward boy who treated me like I was the first person to be kind to him. Maybe I was.

During those first weeks, I often wondered how good an actor Peter was. Whether he wasn’t as he seemed, whether he made me grow so attached so fast in order to feed his god. I know he does that now. Feeds on my loneliness, on how I hurt when he ignores me. He wouldn’t have back then. 

I’d given up on learning from him when I asked him to live with me. I had an extra room, as my flatmate had graduated the previous semester, and he clearly needed out. I moved on, went back to studying what little I could learn of the powers from books in the library, tracking down people who’d had encounters whenever I could. I changed my major to Paranormal Studies.

Peter adjusted quickly. I knew he would; he was brilliant when he put his mind to something. He got a job and paid half of the rent and I liked having him around. I introduced him to my friends and that should have been that. He should have been just my university flatmate, just a friend I could bring to parties now and then and that I might lose touch with after I graduated.

But there was one thing Peter didn’t grow out of. Even after living with me nearly a semester, after making his own friends and his own life, he still looked at me like he worshipped me. With anyone else, he could pretend. He could fool anyone, make them think anything he wanted to just from the tone of his voice, but he could never trick me. I could feel the gratitude and the admiration coming off him, and I got used to it. I hung around him as much as I could, because I loved the way he made me feel. Important, irreplaceable. 

I suppose I shouldn’t have done that. Though I was years away from recognizing the Beholding’s claim on me, and decades from giving in to it, the Eye had already started giving me gifts. It let me know how people felt, if not what they were thinking. And I felt so much from Peter.

I knew he wanted to leave the Lonely behind him forever, of course. He’d told me that not long after he moved in, when we were both too tired to keep our eyes open but enjoying the company too much to sleep. And the Eye told me that he was still lonely, just not in the same way.

I’m still not sure why I kissed him that night. Maybe it was to make him feel wanted, to make the flood of positive emotions he usually sent my way stronger. I’d gotten addicted to it, and I needed more. Maybe it was because we were drunk and he was handsome in a forgettable way, beautiful when you were looking and difficult to remember when you looked away. Maybe it was because I could feel how much he wanted from the world, and though I knew that the space in his heart he was trying to fill was a black hole, I hoped that he could want me. 

In the end, why I did it doesn’t matter. I did it, and there was no going back from there. I’m not sure when our paths became forever intertwined, whether it was when I looked at him taking a shot of cheap whiskey and laughing on the armrest of my chair and felt the sharpest spike of my own emotion I’d felt in months, or when I pushed him against the wall and we desperately grabbed at every part of each other we could reach. It could have been as long ago as when he walked into my flat for the first time. 

I certainly never meant to fall in love with him. He loved me from the beginning, I think. But I didn’t know; what I felt from him never changed. For months and months, we were just best friends who fucked when we were drunk on the weekends, or when we were stressed, and eventually, just because we wanted to. 

I told him I loved him in a back alley early on a Sunday morning when the thought of stumbling the last two blocks home seemed impossible. I didn’t mean it, but I knew he wanted me to say it. I thought he deserved at least the thought that someone loved him, even if it wasn’t true. He didn’t say it back, but he kissed me differently. It wasn’t our usual mad dash to skin, when the only objective was to touch as much as we could, knowing that every touch would only add fuel to our fire. This was something with more meaning behind it, and though I pretended it didn’t change anything, I could feel something in my chest start to melt.

At some point over the next year, as my friends at the parties I used to attend grew irritated with my inability to keep my hands off Peter and we started staying home more often on Friday nights, I realized that if I left him, I’d be leaving a part of me, too, and not an insignificant part. I didn’t know what love was, then, and I still don’t think I know now, but that’s as close to it as I can put into words. 

I tried to stay away from him. I studied for hours in the library, and I lost track of time as I crammed as much knowledge as I could into my brain and it still wasn’t enough. But every time I looked up from whichever book I was poring over, I would miss Peter so much it felt like my heart was twisting inside my chest. My next thought was that I only missed him so much because I was, for lack of a more refined term, horny. So I found a girl who seemed interested at a bar, and I let myself be interested back. 

Peter doesn’t know, of course. He loved me with every part of his soul and there was never a time over our thirty-six years that I wanted to destroy that love enough to tell him I was so scared of commitment that I cheated. And by the time we got back together, it didn’t matter. What was I supposed to say, ‘I cheated on you fifty-seven years ago and even though I know you sleep with other people just to make me jealous I still feel bad?’ 

I only did it once. The sex was fine, and I barely even thought of Peter. (I did think of him though, found my thoughts drifting even as she lay beneath me.) But when I climbed into bed beside Peter just as the sun was starting to come up, I knew I’d been wrong. Simply waking up next to Peter, him kissing me on the cheek as he left for work, far too awake for the time of day, made me happier than any amount of sex with someone else. 

The plans for my Institute were already in the works when we got married. I hadn’t told Peter. I didn’t want him to worry. He’d have resented my involvement with the powers, the world I had said I would stay away from even if I was impossibly curious. So we got married, and afterward I was surprised. No one had broken in to our flat to tell us we couldn’t do this. Nothing had appeared to drag us away from each other. I thought then that the Lonely had finally given up on him.

Even then, I knew the powers would tear us apart. Meeting the way we did, it was inevitable. But I couldn’t feel the Lonely anywhere near him, and I didn’t Know his emotions - I knew them because I knew him. Peter whispered ‘I love you’ like a prayer, over and over until we put his mouth to other uses. I loved him too, and even the thought that the promise of forever I’d given him wouldn’t last terrified me. That its failure was a certainty hurt too much to bear thinking about.

Peter was so betrayed when I opened my Institute. He knew what I was doing better than I did, knew that neutrality of the type I professed was impossible when I kept tempting the Eye like that. But I hadn’t listened. I couldn’t listen - I was too curious, and by this point, too scared.

I’d met Smirke in university, where he’d been a not-too-distant graduate with a barely concealed interest in the supernatural, and we had never stopped corresponding. My Institute was meant to help us both, though in the end it killed him. Or rather, I killed him. But back then, I hadn’t given up. We worked to bind the powers, and somehow I thought we could succeed. 

I promised Peter that it wasn’t what it seemed like. I was working against the Beholding just as much as I worked against the others. ‘I would never drag you back into this,’ I begged, desperate to convince him I knew what I was doing. He didn’t believe me.

He left me. Only for a week, but it was more than long enough to prove his point. I missed him every moment he wasn’t around. He hadn’t told me he’d be back, just said that if he couldn’t have a normal life with me, if he couldn’t trust me, he didn’t want me. I felt like I’d been shot. No, it was worse. Being shot is a physical pain, and this felt like Peter had ripped my heart out of my chest and taken my soul with it. I told myself I’d always known it would happen, that it was better to get it over with now and still have a lifetime to get over him. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I was never getting over him.

When he came back I almost cried of relief. Then, I thought I’d give anything to have just a little more time with him. I knew with absolute certainty that there was no part of me that didn’t completely belong to him, and I told him so in shaky breaths in between deep kisses. 

Of course, I didn’t stop my work at the Institute. Smirke and I were determined, and Peter let it go. In the end, we made everything worse. Binding places were transformed into places of power, and suddenly there was no power that didn’t have a ritual to follow. A quick and easy script to bring about the end of the world. 

When I chose the Beholding, I did so because I knew it was the only way. I’d been playing this game of fear politics for so long without fully realizing it, and there was no longer a way to stop the entities. All I could do was choose which one would triumph. I promised myself to it, and I knew as I did so that I’d lost Peter forever. I told myself I was okay with it because he would be safe, because if the Eye was manifest then the Lonely would be destroyed. I did what I had to do.

The Eye let me see anything I wanted, once I’d become its avatar. I never used it to spy on Peter. I thought that if I didn’t, I’d be better off. The pain of missing him still felt like a gaping hole in my chest, but I never gave in to the temptation to See him again. I knew the Eye would give me immortality, that I would never have to suffer the pain of old age and death. I hoped that I could forget Peter over time. And after a while, the ache did become muted, though it never fully vanished.

I heard, of course, of a new avatar rising through the ranks of the Lonely. I hoped with everything I had that it wasn’t Peter, that he hadn’t gone back. The Eye can’t Watch the Forsaken, but even if it could, I wouldn’t have. Yes, knowing who exactly I was dealing with was valuable intelligence, but not valuable enough to break the rule I’d set for myself. 

I couldn’t avoid him forever. The ritual Smirke had described to me, that I thought I could immediately complete, was far from ready, so I had to form my own alliances. It wouldn’t have been my choice to do so with the Lonely, but they had funds that my Institute desperately needed.

That meeting almost ruined everything for me. I’d worked so hard to build alliances, to make the other, older avatars see me as an equal. I’d tried my best to prepare. I told myself that it had been twenty-two years and I was over him. That the representative of the Lukas family wouldn’t be him, but if it was I would be okay, that he didn’t matter to me anymore. I conveniently ignored the fact that I’d spent every one of the anniversaries we would have had drinking alone, that I’d never even tried to find someone else.

All of that preparation didn’t mean anything. Peter walked in fifteen minutes late (He’d hated being late, before.) and smiled at me and Simon Fairchild with the same blank eyes, and I could barely keep my face neutral. Fairchild raised an eyebrow at me and snorted a laugh, so I may not have managed it. 

Normally, I love paperwork. It’s repetitive and tedious and contains so many hidden loopholes most people never think to look for. But then I couldn’t stand it. Negotiating our alliance, drawing up the terms and reading them over, would have been a perfect afternoon if Peter hadn’t been there. But he was, and I couldn’t focus. 

I missed most of what was said that day. I kept catching myself staring at Peter, mind lost in memories of what we’d had and foolish scenarios where we could just pick up where we left off, as if it had ever been that simple. Just because we looked the same didn’t mean we hadn’t changed.

Knowing it was impossible didn’t stop me. I caught Peter looking once or twice, and from then on me concentrating on the topic at hand was a lost cause. When Fairchild finally adjourned the meeting, sending me an exaggerated wink before leaving, I was lost. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be pretending anymore. So I sat in my chair and resolutely looked anywhere but Peter and told myself my hands weren’t shaking.

I expected him to walk out. It would have been the perfect sacrifice to his god. The aching want and the years of sadness and pain were practically radiating off of me. Instead, he walked over to me and leaned against the table beside my chair and reached out to turn my face toward his. He held me at arms length with two fingers resting on my cheek, and my eyes slipped closed.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, and I melted into him. 

I got a letter a few days later. Peter was going out to sea, it said, and would be gone several months, but he would like to inquire if I wanted to have coffee when he returned. I knew what he was doing; he wasn’t subtle. I also knew there was no way for me to say no. It was like there was a knife in my heart and everything Peter did slowly twisted it.

Every time we got married, it was a cold ceremony followed by us trying our best to make up for how horrible we were for each other with sex. And every time, I let myself fall for it. I loved him, or I needed him, or both. I left him so many times, knowing that neither of us deserved this. I could never stay away. Some part of me still needs him like air.

I regret losing what we had, but I don’t regret my actions. When I chose the Beholding, I chose freely, and I remain convinced of the necessity of my choice. And at least I still have Peter, though I wonder whether the constant cycle of tears and pain and sex and loneliness is worth it. I’m not sure whether it hurts less to have him and know it won’t last or to be apart and waiting for him, but I know either is preferable to the thought of not having him at all.”

 

Elias opened his eyes. He’d never given a statement before; it hadn’t been necessary. He didn’t feel the same kind of relief that the other statement-givers always claimed to experience as they left. He didn’t feel lighter. Maybe it was because of his closeness to the Eye. Maybe it was because while their experiences were over, his would never end. 

He Looked to his office, his longing for Peter a physical ache in his chest. His chair was empty, and the area was clear of Forsaken fog. With a bitter sigh, he laid down on his standard-issue prison cot. He searched for Peter until his thoughts started to grow fuzzy with sleep. When he couldn’t find him, he poured all his energy into sending Peter a message.

Elias knew he could strategically place truths in other people’s brains. He’d had fun terrorizing his staff with it, before that incompetent fool had outsmarted him. He’d never tried it without his victim before him though, and never with another avatar. As he fell asleep, he focused on sending Peter a message. Putting his own truth in his husband’s head. 

‘I love you. I miss you. Come back to me, I need you.’

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!! Kudos/comments make my entire day (especially comments, they're what keeps me writing!)  
> I'm @alpacasandravens on tumblr as well if anyone wants to talk about these bastards


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